Glenn Urges Probe for Toxic Experiments : Health: Senator says U.S. should disclose if any patients were unwittingly exposed to any hazardous substance in tests like those for radiation.

Calling Cold War-era radiation experiments on often-unsuspecting patients “unconscionable,” Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) Thursday urged President Clinton to order a government-wide review to determine whether any similar experiments with other dangerous substances had been performed or were now under way.

Glenn, who chairs the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, suggested that the once-secret radiation tests might be only one piece in a dark pattern of experimentation with dangerous substances--including drugs, chemicals, pesticides and other hazardous materials--that could have been conducted by government agencies on unwitting subjects.

Furthermore, he said, it was possible that such tests were continuing. Although stressing that he had no evidence that either case was true, he said he was disturbed that no one had yet addressed the questions.

“I am calling for a government-wide review of all testing programs--from drug tests at FDA to military tests at DOD--to determine if any improper experiments on humans persist to this day,” Glenn said. “We need to know from the Administration that they are doing everything possible to assure that no improper testing . . . continues. No other answer is acceptable.”

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The senator’s remarks came as he announced that his committee will conduct hearings later this month on the newly publicized radiation experiments.

Information about the radiation tests was released last month by Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary in the name of full government disclosure.

Energy Department officials are still reviewing massive amounts of documents to determine the full extent and nature of the testing. So far, it appears that many of the tests were conducted--often with fatal consequences--on subjects who were unaware of the potential dangers.

Some of the tests, conducted in an era when fears of nuclear attack were heightened, apparently were designed to determine the effect of radiation fallout on humans.

President Clinton responded to O’Leary’s move by appointing a task force to oversee an investigation into the roles other agencies--the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, for example--might have played in the testing.

Although commending those efforts, Glenn said Clinton also should order full disclosure of any other kind of experiments conducted on human subjects by any government agency.

“We know that radiation testing--presumably with informed consent--continues within the government,” Glenn told a Capitol Hill news conference. “But do we know, with 100% certainty, that testing without consent does not continue to this day somewhere deep in the bowels of the federal government?”

Glenn, whose committee held a number of hearings on radiation safety throughout the 1980s, said that the first of several hearings on the radiation testing issue would begin later this month and that O’Leary had agreed to testify before the committee on Jan. 20.